Definition of heroic couplet in US English:
heroic couplet
nounhəˈrōik ˈkəpləthəˈroʊɪk ˈkəplət
(in verse) a pair of rhyming iambic pentameters, much used by Chaucer and the poets of the 17th and 18th centuries such as Alexander Pope.
Example sentencesExamples
- Maybe programs don't teach scansion of metered verse any more, but how could someone get to be a graduate student in English without picking up, somewhere along the way, the ability to tell a couple of heroic couplets from a ballad stanza?
- Nor did we particularly care about the form their thinking took; we hoped for essays of 2,500 words or so, but were prepared to accept interior monologues, one-act plays, heroic couplets and maybe even haiku.
- Pale Fire consists of a 999-line poem in heroic couplets followed by a 200-page Commentary with Index.
- Though still written in the neo-classical heroic couplet, The Economy is a quite different poem from its predecessor.
- The poem is significant, as well as for the charm of its prologue, for the fact that it is the first attested use of the heroic couplet in Chaucer (and, as far as is known, in English poetry).